L'Ecole des Ponts et
Chaussées
Darcy's
entry into L'Ecole
des Ponts et Chaussées (School of Bridges and Roads)
would shape the course of the rest of his life. The Corps of Ponts
et Chaussées was first assembled in 1716 with a mission
to support infrastructure construction throughout the country.
By decree of the Royal Council in 1747, the School was created
to educate and train both new students and practicing engineers
for the Corps. (Lifelong learning is clearly not a concept recently
invented by American Academics.) It was the first modern engineering
school and elevated engineers in France to the status of a profession.
This was no modest advance. The School and the Corps provided
an environment that both expected excellence and furnished the
support for education and research to achieve it. (This was in
strong contrast to the situation that English researchers faced
at that time, where engineers were considered tradesmen for another
hundred years. Froude fought for years to obtain funding
for his towing basin model studies, even when it was clearly in
the best interest of the British Admiralty. In fact, at the end
of the 19th century Lord Reynolds was only the second person in
England to hold an academic appointment in engineering.)
A list of the school's graduates and instructors
reads like a who's-who of 18th and 19th century engineering and
science. It includes, Henri de Pitot (1695-1771), Antoine Chézy
(1718-1798), Gaspard-Marie Riche de Prony (1755-1839),
Pierre Simon Girard (1765-1836), Louis Marie Henri Navier (1785-1836), Jean Claude Barre de Saint-Venant (1787-1886),
Augustin Jean Fresnel (1788-1828), Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789-1857), Gaspard Gustave de Coriolis (1792-1843), Arsene
Jumes Emile Juvenal Dupuit (1804-1866) and Henri Emile Bazin
(1829-1917).
In 1800, France began creating several new
technical schools, and the Germans had begun developing the modern
Research University. Thus, the dominance of L'Ecole des Ponts
et Chaussées would soon be challenged. However, it was
clearly the best institution in the world for hydraulics during
the first half of the 19th century.
At the start of the 19th century, L'Ecole
des Ponts et Chaussées and its students could be described
as being in the right place at the right time. Fluid mechanics
theory had been roughed out by 17th and 18th century scientists
and mathematicians such as Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647), Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782), Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) and Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827). However,
theory was well ahead of engineering. In 1786 Pierre Louis Georges
Du Buat (1734-1809) wrote,
- "One knows that until now our understanding
of hydraulics has been extremely limited; for however many great
geniuses have applied themselves to it at different times, we
are still after so many centuries, in almost absolute ignorance
of the true laws to which the movement of water is subject; after
one hundred fifty years one has barely discovered, with the aid
of experiment, the duration, the quantity, and the velocity of
the flow of water from a given orifice. All that concerns the
uniform course of the waters of the surface of the earth is unknown
to us; …For lack of principles, one adopts projects of which
the cost is only too real but of which the success is ephemeral;…"
(Principles d'hydraulique, v'erifi'es par un grand nombre d'exp'eriences
faites par ordre du gouvernement, 2nd edition, Paris, 1786. Translated
by Rouse and Ince, in History of Hydraulics, 1957)
Du Buat was basically lamenting that the
resistance to flow for most all conditions was unknown. Without
that knowledge, open channels and closed conduits could not be
designed with any guarantee that they would work as desired. However,
as any modern engineer knows, anything can be done with enough
time and money. Economic growth and political commitment to infrastructure
development would provide the money in France. Thus in time someone
would solve the problems, and the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées
were the only ones ready for the task.
When Darcy entered L'Ecole des Ponts et
Chaussées, it was open to students from the whole of France,
recruitment was by competitive examination, tuition was free,
and students received a fixed stipend. The total enrollment was
less than 100 and there would have been a student to teacher ratio
of less than 5:1. Most instructors were graduates of the school
who had returned after a period of practice. Many of these returning
engineers and scientists would also be pursuing their own studies.
Prony was the school's director, so it is reasonable to expect
the students received a heavy dose of fluid mechanics and hydraulics,
(whether they wanted it or not). Navier was also teaching there
at the time. Curiously, the School's first engineering laboratory
was yet to be built. Instead, there was a long tradition of an
annual real-world project that the students would complete. Darcy
did well in his studies and graduated in 1826 with a degree in
Civil Engineering.
His only academic problem of record resulted
from the exam given before his admittance to Ponts et Chaussées.
Darcy refused to answer oral chemistry questions; a field he considered
"cooking". That yielded a zero in the oral exam, which
in turn lead to a violent altercation with the examiner, Michael Chevreul (1786-1889). The grade alone
was enough to prevent Darcy's advancement. However, since he had
been rated first in the written test, the jury (and apparently
Chevereul) gave him a light punishment and his final rank was
12th. (One must wonder if today's typical policy of zero tolerance
for such behavior will terminate the career of more than one student
with Darcy's potential.)
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